


The Button

by Ahziel



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-28
Updated: 2020-09-28
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:47:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26704711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ahziel/pseuds/Ahziel
Summary: In the trampled courtyards of Winterfell, Reek finds an old button that once belonged to Theon Greyjoy.Bad things follow.
Relationships: Ramsay Bolton/Reek, Ramsay Bolton/Theon Greyjoy
Comments: 4
Kudos: 37





	The Button

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PenelopeTower](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PenelopeTower/gifts).



> For the Thramsay discord.
> 
> I expect to receive donuts.

The sun was hidden behind a fat bank of white clouds piled low in the sky. With the sun beginning its descent hidden behind the downy veil, the daylight was weak and watery. It was cold, practically freezing; even though Reek wore two woolen sweaters and thick trousers, it was not enough, and his nose ran.

He sniffled, limping forward. He felt older than ever before; he’d woken that morning stiff with pain and cold in the kennels, even though Ramsay’s girls piled around him. Old men walked with their gnarled fingers crabbed, unable to stretch them out fully, didn't they? He remembered the way they would huddle around the roaring hearths in Winterfell to warm their bones and sore joints. Age was not kind to man. Nor were Winterfell’s hearths — at least not anymore.

 _At least I still have fingers,_ Reek thought. _Lord Ramsay has not balanced me out yet._

Clutched in one of the prisoner’s pitiful hands was a shovel, its blade misshapen from countless strikes against rock and gravel. Reek was making his slow way back from the glass gardens, where he’d spent the entire day heaving heaps of dead dirt out of the protected shelter. It was bitter, backbreaking work. The glass gardens had been warm, however, fed by the hot springs that ran under Winterfell. Bent low over the shovel’s splintery handle, he’d sweated through his layers as the hours crept by with torturous slowness. Now he almost regretted the warmth, because his sweat had begun to cool the moment he’d left the enclosed gardens. 

Worse than the cold was the exhaustion. 

It had a way of creeping in, so softly, like a blanket pulled over one’s eyes. It deadened the senses and numbed the emotions and mind. Reek couldn’t summon the energy to care. It was easier like this, to shamble through the remnants of his life without awareness of the painful shards that cut him daily. There was nothing to look forward to of any real consequence — at best, maybe that Ramsay would leave him alone for a precious few days. 

But Ramsay needed his Reek; needed him for all sorts of things. There was no delineation between nighttime and daytime in Ramsay’s mind. Reek could be summoned from the kennels so early in the morning the frost hadn’t finished icing the battlements yet, or he could be retrieved moments after finally laying his head down upon the rushes to rest. 

There was no rhyme or reason to his mercurial needs, and thus, no way for Reek to build up an orderly schedule and set of expectations for them.

The prisoner paused briefly in his journey to lean the shovel against the stone wall of the first tower where he’d been ordered to leave it upon finishing his duties.

In the tangle of muddy snow and brown grass, something glinted.

Theon paused. He bent over, grunting with the effort, and poked a hand into the clump of sod. His fingers brushed against something smooth. As he straightened, he opened his palm, and there—

—there laid a gleaming button. In the center was a raised Greyjoy sigil.

Reek stared at the button. It was black, polished metal, perfectly round, and the raised decorative kraken was painted gold. Tarnished, but Reek still recognized it from a distant life. It had been one of the buttons on Theon Greyjoy’s fancy sable cloak, sewn on one edge so that the garment could button closed at the shoulder. 

This button was Theon Greyjoy’s. Reek looked up, realized numbly that he stood by the tower where Theon Greyjoy had slept. Maybe when Winterfell had been sacked, someone had thrown items out of the window in Theon’s old room. Maybe Ramsay’s forces had raided Theon’s belongings in the chaos, and the button had popped off in the yard and been unknowingly kicked up against the tower wall.

Reek licked his cracked lips. 

Suddenly he thought of Ramsay seeing him there, holding Theon Greyjoy’s belongings, and shuddered with horror so deep and black it made his breath stick in his lungs. He closed his fist.

 _No,_ he told himself. _I’m not going to get in trouble for this. I’ll give it to Ramsay. He’ll know what to do with it. I don’t even want to look at the thing._

He set off in the direction of the great keep with new purpose to his limping gait. 

_But what if Ramsay thinks you’ve been hiding it?_ a voice whispered. He halted, chewing the cold fingers on his free hand. That did sound like something Ramsay would do. He would want to know where Reek had found it, if he’d been snooping around Theon Greyjoy’s old bedroom … he’d assume Reek had squirreled it away somewhere and only produced it now out of guilt. Then Reek would be punished, and Ramsay would - would put him on the saltire again and ask him if he knew his name.

Reek panted, trembling. “I know my name,” he said aloud, submissive and low. He blinked watery eyes. “Reek, I’m Reek…”

 _Get rid of it!_ the voice insisted, shrill. _Quick! Before he sees you!_

Reek cast his eyes about wildly. Fear had seized ahold of him; it seemed at any second Ramsay would come striding around the corner and catch him standing there in the open courtyard with Theon Greyjoy’s button. That thought did it; without hesitation, he wound his arm back and flung it away like it was a burning coal. The button traced a graceful arc through the air and dropped into the snow without a sound. Theon stared but could not make out where it had disappeared.

There, that was done. He had been good, and Ramsay would not punish him because he would never know Reek had found that button.

Content, he began to make his way to the kennels.

But he’d gone no more than a few steps before an awful thought occurred to him: the courtyard was normally busy with foot traffic — servants crossing the expanse to ferry pails of water to the kitchens and the glass gardens, guards making their rounds, the stablemaster running the horses early in the morning. Underneath their trampling feet, the snow was eventually kicked away to reveal the bald earth. And then someone would find it, and they would bring it to Ramsay, and Ramsay would know Reek had flung it away without bringing it to him …

He turned and hurried over to where he thought he’d seen it land. The snow seemed to bite his knees through his trousers when he kneeled in the slush and began frantically scraping through the mix. _Where, where, where …?_

By sheer luck, he felt the edge of his palm brush up against something smooth and cold. He seized it and brought the handful of snow before his face. The button gleamed innocently. Reek scrabbled up off the ground and hobbled as fast as he could out of the open expanse of the courtyard. In his head, half-formed plans formed like vapor and dissipated just as quickly. He’d throw the button down the well — no, it was capped with ice nearly twelve fingers deep … he’d swallow it … but what if it made him sick and came back up at an inopportune moment … he’d bury it in the dirt … but new growth in the spring would undoubtedly push it up to the surface.

Frenzied, he shoved it in his ragged overshirt. Caught in his layers, it nestled against his chest like a chip of ice. He felt marginally better with it out of sight once again. 

The sun dipped below the horizon. Shadows pooled in every crevasse and cranny, and Theon half-expected Ramsay to step out of any one of them, declaring he’d failed a test or game of some sort. 

Tomorrow, he decided. Tomorrow he would find a place to hide it, a place so well-hidden so that no one would ever find it again.

When Reek woke early the next morning, it was to the realization that the button had not disappeared during the night. His skin had warmed the metal. As he lay there in a stupor, distracted by the pain that rushed to greet him every day, it almost felt comforting. Theon raised his head. He could not make out much; the torches had gone out at some point in the night. But all was quiet save for the occasional sigh and rustle from the dogs.

Moving slow and careful, he fetched the button from inside his shirt. In case someone entered the kennels unexpectedly, he dared not look at it in the dark. Instead, he clenched it in his fist behind his hip and rubbed his thumb back and forth over the Greyjoy sigil. The metalwork was just raised enough that he could trace it with his thumb.

In the dark, Reek dared to remember.

He remembered Robb Stark gifting a fine sable cloak to Theon Greyjoy, a garment he’d commissioned from Winterfell’s most skilled tailor. Theon swept it on over his shoulders — it had been much too big for him then, gods, they’d been so young — and made a show of sailing around the room with his nose pointed directly at the ceiling as he mocked the stuffy voices of the lords and ladies at court. How Robb had laughed. _I had to get the buttons made special,_ he’d insisted through his chuckles. _But the smith has never seen a kraken before, so the sigils came out looking a little oddly-shaped._

 _I should hope he’s never seen a kraken!_ Theon had joked. _Picture it: a giant cruel eye and_ _a thousand limbs flailing about and dragging great ships down to the depths._ _You mainlanders would never step foot in a puddle again._

 _Have_ you _ever seen a kraken?_

_No, but a fair few maidens have informed me that I seem to have an extra limb of my own in between my legs..._

Reek smiled fleetingly. Robb and Theon’s crude laughter seemed to hang in his ears like a memory of smoke. He traced over the button again. Somehow, the darkness had sloughed away the terror of the button. 

He returned it inside his shirt and fell back asleep.


End file.
